


Hope Deferred Maketh Something

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds, The West Wing
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For (and inspired by) <a href="http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://raedbard.livejournal.com/"><b>raedbard</b></a>, with love (and a hope that it may prove inspiring *smiles*). Title from <i>Waiting For Godot</i> by Samuel Beckett.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Hope Deferred Maketh Something

**Author's Note:**

> For (and inspired by) [](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile)[**raedbard**](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/), with love (and a hope that it may prove inspiring *smiles*). Title from _Waiting For Godot_ by Samuel Beckett.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fandom: criminal minds](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fandom:+criminal+minds), [fandom: west wing](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fandom:+west+wing), [fic](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [pairing: toby/gideon](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/pairing:+toby/gideon), [rating: r](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/rating:+r)  
  
---|---  
  
_**[Fic: Hope Deferred Maketh Something: R]**_  
**Title:** Hope Deferred Maketh Something  
**Author:** [](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**melliyna**](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/)  
**Fandoms:** Criminal Minds/West Wing  
**Pairings:** Toby/Gideon  
**Word Count:** 1,164  
**Rating:** R  
**Warnings:** Apocalypse. Character Deaths.  
**Disclaimer:** Criminal Minds, the concept and the characters belong to their creator, CBS and their respective actors. The West Wing belongs to Aaron Sorkin, Warner Bros and the characters respective actors. Waiting For Godot belongs to Samuel Beckett. This is a fan work, no profit making or copyright infringement is intended.   
**Author's Note:** For (and inspired by) [](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/profile)[**raedbard**](http://raedbard.livejournal.com/), with love (and a hope that it may prove inspiring *smiles*). Title from _Waiting For Godot_ by Samuel Beckett.

When Gideon meets Toby neither of them would say they are running. Maybe they've learnt you can't run from your brain, even if it does help to put some mileage between you and the problem. But Toby has made his peace with Jed Bartlet, with what has ended. He made it long ago, but he's still here and waiting. And so is Gideon, even when he says, I did my best. I did the best I could. There was nothing else I could have done.

It's a refrain, it keeps it going. For whatever value 'keeping it going' can be said to have. It helps with the waiting.

It is not a meeting in DC, but in New York, across the tables of a diner that is recognizable as having been half the setting of a sitcom diner. It had been bustling the last time Toby had visited the city. The time before that, it had been packed with crowds - drawn by the theater that was not so far away and bustling with life, in counterpoint to the diner and to the streets. That was the city - it changed, ebbed and flowed but it always bustled with life and the patterns of civilization. Gideon seems as comfortable in the city as it is now, as he would be anywhere but then, Gideon was always comfortable in strange ways.

They find comfort in the rest of being in limbo, though neither of them would have thought it. But it's awkwardly easy, as they wait.

-

When you are waiting at the end of the world in the ashes of what had been one of its hubs, sometimes it helps not to say it. Much better to just accept that there's nothing to do but wait and wait just a little more, for good measure. Awkwardly easy, that's them. Toby checks his watch until the battery runs out altogether. Gideon already seems to have crossed off his links to life, to time. Ticked them away, with every moment the dust settles. This way, this way he can wait without having to face anything in his own mind anymore.

But he still drinks the coffee Toby brews. Though Toby doesn't count, really. He's not an old friend, a friend of the past, not an acquaintance but not a stranger. A human being who happened to trudge in to this place. And it's not as though they are going to have the awkwardness of leaving and of wondering about the possibilities of running in to each other again, of making conversation and then trying to find a place for each other in their lives. They can just wait, that's all.

There's no need to shape the narrative in his head, though Toby tries anyway. Gideon (and he is just Gideon, no first name) seems to have ghosts that Toby has never thought of, just as Toby has hopes that he does not speak aloud. Of safe havens, untainted ground, bunkers and routes to safety, to places where the bustle of humanity lives on in friends, family, novels, newspapers. He does not think of names, because to indulge such hopes is to dissolve them and so it is better to simply occupy the world of now - of this diner.

The chairs and tables are still arranged, booths still solid and the menus are still in a stack by the front counter, waiting to be distributed. A pot of coffee that was ready to be brewed, next to a neon drinks machine. The coffee is still good, though it would taste better with pie. Toby, if he wanted to remember would remember what the pie here used to taste like - shaped by human hands and presence, still warm from the oven. The texture of pastry and fruit. But maybe it's better to think that that was the dream and that the lack of presence and motion of life is simply what has always been. He has always been here, waiting with this man Gideon who has only one name to speak of.

Whom he knows, but does not know.

Knows. The shapes and lines of a body that is not his, sanded by dust. There might have been a hint of old scars, somewhere but they are gone in the new lines, the calluses of a long journey, a long flight to a waiting room. The way the eyes of Gideon are practiced manipulators, that even now he hides his secrets behind whatever blankness he causes to be there, that he might not even remember himself and the scratchiness of skin, of unshaven beard against skin and a mouth that tastes of dust, of coffee and contamination.

Does not know. A truth. A life. A job. A family. A first name, to put on a headstone. The kind of thing you'd need to know, if you weren't waiting but then, Gideon knows and does not know of him, as well. It is better, to leave the does not know behind as a relic, irrelevant to the present to be swallowed by the dust. But they go through the human rituals of life - of awakening, of washing, of morning coffee, of sleep and sex. They go through them, waiting, even though there is no life to be lived. Only waiting.

And Toby thinks. Huck. Molly. Andy. Sam. CJ. Josh. Dad. Mom. Jed. Abbey. Leo. Mallory. Will. Let the poets write. Better angels. It runs through his head and the present only says that there is no point to this. None at all. There is merely waiting and the rituals of civilization only go so far. But he thinks, what are Gideon's name's, though the man never says, never even gives a sign that he has thought of such a thing.

They do not talk much for speech means stories. It means history, it means life and movement and what was before. And it is a dangerous thing, hope when you are waiting.

-

Jason Gideon does not want to remember, ever again. He just wants to wait. Tomorrow, tomorrow there will be dust, coffee and Toby. Maybe tomorrow it will end.


End file.
